A VPN isn’t going to protect you from malware or trackers. I’m not sure how they can get away with this marketing.

If you want to boost your security focus on your web browser

  • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    ispot.tv is on one of my DNS blacklists, it seems to be an advertising service?

    Many VPNs have built in traffic filtering that does block common malware, phishing, and tracking domains/IPs.

    Their advertising claims still do get a bit ridiculous though.

    • edric@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, they’re not completely telling the truth, but they aren’t exactly lying either.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        They literally aren’t saying anything. There are no verbs in this advertisement; the narrator is speaking in noun phrases, not sentences. So he’s literally saying nothing.

    • CookieJarObserver@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Internet providers, governments and criminals can see what you are doing online, With VPN they can’t anymore.

      Thats basically it.

      • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        …they can’t really? Only the domain name is visible to the ISP, and criminals are either stopped by https or won’t care about a VPN.

        • m_f@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Everything’s visible for HTTP, and in fact some ISPs inject their own ads into HTTP content. HTTPS is harder for malicious actors, but your ISP can tell when you’re visiting pornhub.com, and will happily provide that to the government. With encrypted SNI it’s somewhat harder, but if you’re visiting an IP address of 1.2.3.4, and that IP address is solely used by pornhub.com, it’s not hard to guess what you’re up to.

          • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Yes, I’m aware. IP addresses are come colocated to hell and back, and every site uses https. I’m sure your ISP is getting some real interesting data watching you visit the same 4 sites.

          • Tuss@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Not all isps are bad.

            Mine have their own free vpn service which encrypts all traffic and hides your IP. So even if the government want anything on you they can’t give it to them.

            On top of that they are notorious for not giving the government anything. They also have competitive pricing.

      • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Yeah I don’t buy it.

        Instead of tapping individual connections, you now only have to tap the traffic to/from the VPNs exit nodes. Then you correlate incoming packets with outgoing packets (e.g. based on size, timing, etc) and you know the origin of the traffic.

        Bonus is that it acts as a filter, people using a VPN want to hide their traffic so you specifically want to watch those people.

      • dvdv@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        With a VPN it’s harder for some and impossible for others. But don’t for a second think nobody can see what you’re doing. I don’t want to go into the whole tinfoil provacy rabbithole but with things like browser fingerprinting it’s all moot

  • phx@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    They have some additional services they advertise that supposedly deals with these, though I’d imagine they require installed software which would give them more visibility into systems than I’m comfortable with.

    For trackers and to some extent malware, they could potentially block some by disallowing outgoing traffic from the VPN to known tracker IP’s/domains or C&C hosts/networks, but I could see that being fairly infectivity overall with potentially for false positives.

  • ijeff@lemdro.id
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    1 year ago

    They’re probably referring to their DNS ad and malicious domain filter.

  • Melllvar@startrek.website
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    1 year ago

    I thought the ‘security’ angle was just a smokescreen anyway. Isn’t it actually for accessing region-locked media?

          • tsz@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Name a popular service that isn’t encrypted but using it might expose you in a legitimate way.

        • terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Well, not really with these, per se. My own VPN, Wireguard, routes back through my pihole service to double down on it’s filtering. For the most, I’m not trying to obfuscate my ip. If I wanted to do that I’d use tor or something. I just don’t want my traffic to be easily snooped on when I’m connected to wifi that isn’t mine.

    • Norgur@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Well, if you access things on the internet you could be sued for, your IP will not appear in the logs of your ISP or the webserver you connected to.

      • Melllvar@startrek.website
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        1 year ago

        Sure. But they can’t advertise on that point. So they claim it’s for malware and tracking protection even though that makes no sense.